Deep Penetration; Alien Breeders I (21 page)

That might just complicate his
personal agenda.

It wasn’t that he was any
less angry or less inclined to retaliate, but he didn’t feel
that
much urgency—not
enough to delay his plans for Emerald. In point of fact, going off
to war was more of an incentive to make certain he bred her before
he left. He certainly didn’t expect or plan to be a casualty, but
then again no one ever did.

The question was, was it reasonable to
wait until he had all of his facts before he made the report? It
seemed both reasonable and imperative. But would the high council
see it that way? Or would he find himself in hot water for delaying
at all?

If he was ordered to immediately
launch a counter attack, what would he do with Emerald? He sure as
hell didn’t want to risk taking her into battle with him. He didn’t
give a fuck if she had been a soldier. She wasn’t now. She was his
breeder and he wasn’t going to risk her.

Was it safe to send her to Niribu to
wait for his return, though?

He couldn’t leave her on Earth. Aside
from the fact that there was no place that they’d discovered so far
that would be protected enough to suit him, he had a bad feeling he
might spend years searching for her when he came back to collect
her. She wasn’t inclined to accept her circumstances, regardless of
her efforts to pretend that she was. She wouldn’t be waiting for
him in he left her.

Could he afford to spare the time with
what he knew now, though, to breed her before he had to leave
her?

As far as he knew, no one knew what
Pete had told him, but Merrick knew he was trying to negotiate
better conditions. Once it came out, Merrick would also know when
and how the information had been passed.

He could always bribe Merrick but
short of seeing to it that he had an ‘accident’ that was no
guarantee that it wouldn’t come out and cold blooded murder for his
own ends wasn’t something he was willing to contemplate. He had no
problem killing if it was a matter of survival or protecting his
own from harm, but he couldn’t justify killing Merrick simply
because he was in his way.

He had finally decided he would have
to simply play it by ear, regardless of the possible outcome. He
had a duty to his people that superseded his personal
considerations. He didn’t know that Pete had anything at all to
offer and, even if he was right and there was a craft, he wouldn’t
know until they examined it whether it would yield up the
information they needed or not.

He’d arranged to check out Pete’s
claims the following day. After a little consideration, he decided
not to include anyone but Koryn, whose interests were also at
stake.

He hadn’t touched Emerald the night
before. He’d explained to her that he was allowing her time to heal
since the rawness would negate the effectiveness of her discipline.
He didn’t want her to get the entirely wrong impression after what
had transpired earlier and begin to believe he was so soft where
she was concerned that she could manipulate him. He informed her
that he fully intended to resume their sessions as soon as it was
effective once more and she needn’t think otherwise.

He supposed it might have
been equally effective to leave her wondering. He’d considered that
worrying about it might be beneficial. He was uncomfortably aware
that he’d been so … unsettled at the results of his poorly thought
out and executed attempt to prepare her for breeding, however, that
she
could
get the
wrong impression. He supposed that might also have been beneficial
in a way, keeping her off guard, but he hadn’t wanted to risk the
possibility of her getting that idea into her head at
all.

He suspected Koryn thought
he was soft where Emerald was concerned, but the bastard was wrong
if he did. The only reason he gave a fuck whether she hated him or
not was for his own pleasure. If she hated him, she wouldn’t
respond to him, which would decrease his own pleasure—once he
fucking
got
to
that point!

Just a little longer, he told himself
as he studied her sleeping form in his arms. By Koryn’s
calculations, she should be reaching the peak of her fertility
cycle just about the time she was strong enough for that sort of
activity. Of course, he knew he would still have to be very careful
with her for a while—especially if he succeeded in impregnating her
right away—which he hoped to do.

Under other circumstances, he would’ve
been perfectly happy to work at it for a while, but it seemed
imperative to insure his claim to her. The others might rant over
it, but they would have to concede the importance of his own
bloodlines and that would give him time. Very likely, by the time
she produced his first heir, the hoopla would’ve died a natural
death and everyone would have settled on someone else. If not ….
Well, he could work on it. It still might sort itself out in the
meantime.

He realized as he studied Emerald that
he was still unsettled about what had happened the day before—not
especially about the rough handling, although that still bothered
the hell out of him. He’d managed to, mostly, dismiss that, though,
when he realized she didn’t seem to be traumatized by it either
emotionally or physically as he’d feared.

It was the deep fear he’d felt, he
realized, that was really bothering him. He wasn’t used to feeling
fear about anything, dismay on occasion, but not cold sweat fear
and certainly not for anything in the nature of a possession. Anger
wouldn’t have surprised him or particularly bothered him. He didn’t
like to lose.

It made his chest feel uncomfortably
tight all over again, just remembering it. It made him reluctant to
leave the bed and go about his business even though he knew it was
important—far more important than laying abed cuddling his pretty
little trinket.

Shaking the thought and the urge to
hold her a little longer for the pleasure it would give him to feel
her warmth, he disentangled himself and got up to prepare for his
excursion. Koryn was waiting impatiently when he arrived at the
docking bay with his prisoner in tow.

“
I stowed my gear in the
skimmer already,” Koryn announced.

Tariq scanned him. “You need to get a
weapon. We don’t know what to expect or what we might
encounter.”

Koryn sent him a startled look, saw
that Tariq was wearing a holster and armed with a pair of pistols
and then looked at Pete speculatively. He merely nodded, however.
“There should be plenty in the locker on the skimmer.”

Pete was almost too terrified when
they first took off to speak at all or to think. He stammered so
badly every time Tariq asked for directions that Tariq finally set
the skimmer down. Grabbing the man by the front of his shirt, he
lifted him bodily from his chair. “Do you or do you not know how to
find the fucking ship you told me about?” he growled through
gritted teeth.

The man gaped at him in horror. “It’s
west of where we was caught,” he stammered finally.

“
Due west?”

Pete’s jaw sagged. “Toward the sun,”
he answered finally.

Tariq dropped him and returned to the
controls. The skimmer was fast enough it shouldn’t have taken them
more than an hour to reach the crash site instead of the nearly
three it did. Pete was too frightened or too confused to be of much
help, however, until Tariq finally realized that it was the height
frightening and confusing him more than anything else. Once he’d
taken the skimmer down so that it was traveling no more than a few
feet above the treetops, Pete seemed to gather his wits. He pointed
out, repeatedly, that that unnerved him, often enough Koryn began
to seriously consider throttling the bastard himself. However, he
also began to point out landmarks he recalled as they headed in a
westerly direction from the capture site and Koryn managed to
control the irritation that arose from the man’s incessant
babbling.

The ship he’d told them about had
crashed on the outskirts of another city, they discovered. Tariq
hovered over it for a few minutes, studying the ship itself and
then the area around it. After a few moments, he took the skimmer
up again and surveyed a wider area, using the shipboard scanner to
look for heat signatures that might indicate human habitation that
could present a threat.

When he was satisfied, he landed the
skimmer. Pete hopped up and tried to beat them to the door. Tariq
picked him up, hauled him back to the seat he’d occupied, and
strapped him in. “You’ll wait here,” he said grimly.

“
But …!”

Ignoring his complaints, Tariq joined
Koryn at the hatch again and they lowered the gangplank. The city
was eerily quiet. Apparently, the skimmer had scattered even the
wildlife or sent it into hiding.

They spent nearly an hour removing
enough rubble to find a way in, but by the time they’d cleared away
enough of the rubble to find the hatch, they’d recognized the
design of the craft.

“
Dinjin,” Tariq spat
angrily.

“
We had a gods damned
treaty with the bastards!” Koryn snarled. “I don’t know what pisses
me off more! The fact that we made a treaty with them at all or the
fact that they knew what they’d done when they approached the
council for a treaty!”

“
No doubt this was
the
reason
for
their interest in making a treaty,” Tariq said tightly.

Koryn frowned. “I’m not sure I follow
that.”

Tariq was focused on finding a way in.
After trying the hatch control, he looked around for something to
use as a pry bar and wandered off.

Koryn watched him with irritation.
When Tariq showed no inclination to explain his reasoning when he
returned, Koryn posed the question again.

“
The humans were focused
on holding them here to allow the others to escape. They must have
put up more of a fight that the Dinjin anticipated. If they hadn’t
done a lot of damage, there would’ve been no incentive for the
Dinjin to consider a treaty. They wouldn’t have been worried about
making one with us if they’d thought they had the resources to take
us on, as well.”

Koryn digested that while Tariq worked
on the door. “We don’t know that they attacked,” he pointed out
after a moment. “We haven’t seen any others. There are other
explanations for the presence of the ship. They might have been
intent on nothing more than a survey of the planet.”

“
No … but we will,” Tariq
agreed as he tossed the piece of metal aside, grasped the edge he’d
lifted and began heaving at the door.

It took him several minutes to break
it open. Breathing heavily from the exertion, he sent Koryn a sour
look. “Thanks for helping.”

Koryn grinned. “You seemed to be doing
just fine without my help.”

Grunting a response, Tariq stepped
inside and looked around. They had to shift more debris out of the
way before they could make their way to the control room. They
formed a brigade. Tariq, in the lead, lifted the debris and passed
it to Koryn. Koryn looked it over briefly to see if it was anything
of any importance and then tossed it out.

There were two dead Dinjin in the
seats in front of the ship’s controls—which explained the less than
pleasant odor, Koryn thought grimly. If the ship hadn’t been so
well sealed, however, the bodies wouldn’t have been in any
condition to recognize them.

He dismissed that thought even as it
occurred to him. Their elongated skulls were uncommon enough traits
that it wouldn’t have been that difficult—assuming the skulls had
remained—which they might not have if the ship hadn’t been
sealed.

“
No power,” Tariq
announced. “Either it’s been longer since the attack than we
thought, or this ship wasn’t involved in it ….”

“
Or the power source was
damaged and that was what made them crash to start
with.”

“
Or that,” Tariq agreed.
“We won’t be getting anything off the computer here,
though.”

“
I’m going to collect some
samples,” Koryn said, turning away abruptly.

Tariq glanced at him. “It’s Dinjin. I
think we’ll get more from their computer with less effort than we
would from them even if we revived them.”

“
Not necessarily. The DNA
has a natural tendency to record memories anyway—at least ours
does—and if they developed technology similar to ours they may have
enhanced that. We might not get anything at all, but it’s worth a
shot.”

“
Good point. Watch
yourself around Pete. I suspect he thought this little excursion
might give him the chance to escape and if that was the plan, I
doubt tying him to his chair has dissuaded him.”

Nodding, Koryn left.

“
And keep an eye out for
an attack!” Tariq called after him.

“
If you thought there was
a chance of that why the hell didn’t you bring a couple of guards
to stand watch?” Koryn demanded irritably.

“
I don’t want anybody to
know what we’ve found until I’ve had time to examine the evidence
myself.”

Koryn peered out of the ship
cautiously before he moved to the door and surveyed the surrounding
area. Satisfied when he didn’t see any movement, he headed to the
skimmer to collect his instruments. It was just as well Tariq had
thought to warn him to watch Pete, he thought dryly. The little
bastard had managed to free himself and clobbered him with
something he’d found to use as a club the moment he opened the
door. He dropped his pistol at the blow but managed to retrieve it
before Pete could get his hands on it.